Over two centuries ago, the United States’ Founding Fathers convened in Philadelphia to lay out a framework for the budding nation.
MIC
The year is 1619. Colonists in Jamestown referred to African slaves as n*****s.
The year is 2017. A white male refers to a Black University of Michigan student as a n*****.
Starting this September, graduate students will be paid to help the University of Michigan implement various units’ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategic plans.
Michigan in Color recently sat down to speak with Tyrice Grice Jr.
Ann Arbor is a bubble-community. A bubble community as in perfect-looking from the outside and the people on the inside keep to themselves. Most people living here seem to be nuclear families with white-collar jobs.
On Sept. 17, 2017, three Black University of Michigan students were targeted with racially derogatory language in the form of defaced name tags on their dorm doors.
I sip from a teacup at the dinner table, half listening to my family’s ear-splitting conversations — which, in our world, means light chitchat. My uncle and aunt are talking stocks. One cousin is showing us his dancing skills by flipping his sister over. My grandmother is putting salted fish down. On one end of the table, my older cousin has been roped into a conversation about a startup with my father.
If you attended first year orientation at the University of Michigan between 2013 and 2017, you know Demario Longmire. You may not have had the opportunity to meet him, be graced by his soul soothing voice or held in one of his pain-releasing embraces, but you remember him.
I’m going to ask you three questions, and I need you to answer honestly.
First, did you know that Black children are punished more often and more severely than their white classmates? Second, that Black borrowers are much less likely to be granted a loan than their white counterparts with similar credit scores? And third, that employers prefer applicants with “white”-sounding names over those with “Black”-sounding ones?
Reflective fragments, excerpts, bits from my journals, both paper and electronic since meeting my birth family.